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Sábado 7 de junio de 2008

Por Andy Rowell | Consumidores que el excedente del mundo está comenzando a protestar contra los precios enormes de la gasolina están pagando en la bomba. Pero mientras que el mundo va loco sobre los precios del petróleo, allí se están preocupando muestras de qué está sucediendo en el mercado del gas que podría también deletrear desastre.

Pero es el precio del petróleo que está atrayendo actualmente toda la atención. El mes pasado, Presidente indonesio Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pospuso una visita oficial a Europa en medio de protestas a nivel nacional contra aumentos de los precios de combustible.  En Europa, Francés pescadores continuados para bloquear varios estratégicos puertos, mientras que sus contrapartes adentro España y protestas también amenazadas de Portugal.

En el Reino Unido, los camioneros convergieron en Londres para pedir una reducción en deber del combustible, mientras que Minster primero Gordon Brown negociaciones urgentes llevadas a cabo con la industria de petróleo. Encima en América, el precio del petróleo fue dicho para haber forzado a muchas compañías que acarreaban al borde de la bancarrota.

Pero como el aceite continúa asomando apenas bajo niveles de registro, hay advertencias diarias que los días del aceite barato han ido por siempre y el precio del aceite puede pronto ser $150 o aún $200 por barril por el año próximo.

Hay también un discusión diario en cuanto a qué está causando realmente estos precios sin precedentes. Un número de aumento de voces influyentes está diciendo que no tiene nada hacer con la fuente real de aceite sino que está abajo a los especuladores que explotan el mercado volátil.

La OPEP, que está bajo fuego de muchos comentaristas para no aumentar  la producción más, discute que el mercado ya esté proveído adecuadamente y que $35 por el barril del aumento reciente se pueden colocar a la especulación.

Otras voces convienen, por ejemplo Jeroen van der Ver, cabeza del gigante global del aceite, Shell, que discute que los precios del petróleo de registro sean debido al “sentimiento del mercado” más bien que a una escasez de fuente. “Qué decimos y qué vemos somos allí no somos ninguna escasez física,” él dice. “Allí no hay petroleros que esperan en el Oriente Medio, allí no son ningún coche que espera en las estaciones de la gasolina porque están hacia fuera - de - acción. Esto tiene que hacer con psicología en los mercados y usted no puede pronosticar la psicología.”

His view is shared by George Soros, the multi-billion dollar financier, known as the man who nearly “broke the Bank of England”, in the early nineties. Soros argues that it is financial speculators that are largely responsible for driving the crude oil price. “Speculation… is increasingly affecting the price,” he said. “The price has this parabolic shape which is characteristic of bubbles,” he said.

Political action on speculators is increasing. Last week a senior German politician proposed a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators. Uwe Beckmeyer, the head of transport for the Social Democratic party, the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, argued that the recent 25 per cent rise in oil price had nothing to do with underlying supply and demand. “It’s pure speculation,” he said, adding that his party would be calling for joint measures by the G8 to prohibit leveraged trading on energy contracts.

Also last week, in America, Senator Jeff Bingaman, the chairman of the influential  Senate Energy Committee, asked the top futures market regulator in the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for more information about how much impact speculation was having on the oil futures market. Bingamen then complained he had been given “glaringly incomplete” data by the CFTC,  which argued that speculative trading was not to blame for recent price rises.

If speculation is not to blame, what is? Some argue that it is the weak dollar. Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in the US argues that “Twenty-five percent of the increase in oil prices is strictly due to the fact that the dollar has gone down by 25 percent, because oil all over the world is priced in dollars.”

However, others are now arguing that the high oil price is down to good old simple economics. Demand has outstripped supply over the last couple of years and so the price has increased, on the back of roaring demand, especially from China and the Middle East. “The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply,” President George Bush’s Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, said this month: “We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system.”

Others concur. One of the authoritative arbiters of how much oil there is the International Energy Agency, that is currently in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world’s top 400 oil fields.  Although the findings will not be published until November, according to the Wall Street Journal the IEA is “preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.”

Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, said the oil industry had entered “a new energy world order” where it was harder to keep supply and demand in equilibrium. “What has happened in the last few years has not been in line with economic theory,” he says.

For years the IEA predicted that supplies of crude would gently increase in line with demand increasing to some 117 million barrels per day by 2030. But not anymore. Buried in the IEA website are figures that up the theory that the supply of oil is in real trouble. Since the beginning of 2004, oil’s price has gone from $33 per barrel to over $130 per barrel. In the same period, demand has increased by some 4.3 million barrels per day to 86.5 million barrels per day, whereas supply has increased by only 2.2 million barrels per day to 85.6 million. Supply is already struggling to keep up with demand, let alone reach over 100 million barrels a day.

The bottom line is that demand is now outstripping supply, giving credence to the peak oil pundits that the days of cheap oil over, and the global economy could be heading for a nasty shock.  

See More:World News 

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